Travel + Writing = Meg

YPF is Argentina

For anyone living in Buenos Aires, this move came as no surprise. The writing had been on the wall for weeks. More specifically plastered all over the city.

I woke up in mid-April to find hundreds of political posters plastered all over the city: on bus stops, utility boxes and construction sites. The cheap glue dripped down the sides from an assuming rushed and hurried application of mass produced posters. Here a few examples:

For those of you who don’t speak Spanish, the main idea is this: YPF should be publicly owned.

Since I love Latin American politics, this was fascinating for me. And as strange as it sounds, this is one of the things I love about living in a different country. The chance to see and hear a political debate that would never happen in my home country.

Since the vote, the public TV station has been playing spots like this with nostalgic footage of YPF, emphasizing that “YPF is Argentina”.

By and large, Argentines seem to agree with the principle that Argentina should control the production of such a strategic resource, although not everyone agrees with the manner in which it was done.